Dictionary Poems

If I can stop one heart from breaking,I shall not live in vain;If I can ease one life the aching,Or cool one pain,Or help one fainting robinUnto his nest again,I shall not live in vain. – If I can stop one heart from breaking by Emily Dickinson

OVER the dead line we have called to youTo come across with a word to us,Some beaten whisper of what happensWhere you are over the dead lineDeaf to our calls and voiceless. The flickering shadows have not answeredNor your lips sent a signalWhether love talks and roses growAnd the sun breaks at morningSplattering the sea … Continued

THERE are no handles upon a languageWhereby men take hold of itAnd mark it with signs for its remembrance.It is a river, this language,Once in a thousand yearsBreaking a new courseChanging its way to the ocean.It is mountain effluviaMoving to valleysAnd from nation to nationCrossing borders and mixing.Languages die like rivers.Words wrapped round your tongue … Continued

You tides with ceaseless swell! you power that does this work!You unseen force, centripetal, centrifugal, through space’s spread,Rapport of sun, moon, earth, and all the constellations,What are the messages by you from distant stars to us? what Sirius’? what Capella’s?What central heart–and you the pulse–vivifies all? what boundless aggregate of all?What subtle indirection and significance … Continued

Deeming that I were better dead,How shall I kill myself? I said.Thus mooning by the river SeineI sought extinction without pain,When on a bridge I saw a flashOf lingerie and heard a splash . . .So as I am a swimmer stoutI plunged and pulled the poor wretch out. The female that I saved? Ah … Continued

Mama said I’d lose my headIf it wasn’t fastened on.Today I guess it wasn’t‘Cause while playing with my cousinIt fell off and rolled awayAnd now its gone. And I can’t look for it‘Cause my eyes are in it,And I can’t call to it‘Cause my mouth is on it(Couldn’t hear me anyway‘Cause my ears are on … Continued

Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower—but if I could understand What you are, root and all, all in all, I should know what God and man is. – Flower in the Crannied Wall by Lord Alfred Tennyson

If the good King only knew, Lindy Lou,What a cherub child are you, It is true,He would step down from his throne,And would claim you for his own,Then whatever would I do, Lindy Lou? As I kiss your tiny feet, Lindy Lou,I just feel I want to eat All of you.What’s so heaven-sweet and mildAs … Continued

Her final summer was it,And yet we guessed it not;If tenderer industriousnessPervaded her, we thought A further force of lifeDeveloped from within, —When Death lit all the shortness up,And made the hurry plain. We wondered at our blindness, —When nothing was to seeBut her Carrara guide-post, —At our stupidity, When, duller than our dulness,The busy … Continued

The mountain sat upon the plainIn his eternal chair,His observation omnifold,His inquest everywhere. The seasons prayed around his knees,Like children round a sire:Grandfather of the days is he,Of dawn the ancestor. – THE MOUNTAIN – The mountain sat upon the plain by Emily Dickinson